Some newbie questions

[Douglas Eadline]

On Fri, 8 Jun 2001, Roger L. Smith wrote:

> On Fri, 8 Jun 2001, Stephen Gaudet wrote:
>
> > Hello Tom,
> >
> > > -Can you hook up Macs and PC's in a beowulf?
> >
> > You can use Alpha's, AMD's and Intel's, but as far as I know no support for
> > Macs.
> >
> > > -Do i HAVE to use Linux
> >
> > Yes.
>
> I completely disagree.  Many people nowadays are using the term "beowulf"
> to mean "cluster", and you can cluster pretty much anything with a network
> card and an implementation of MPI (depending on what you're doing).
>
> We've been doing Sun clusters since the late '80s.  I've seen a Mac G4
> cluster running yellowdog Linux, and there are several significant
> NT-based clusters (the A3 at Cornell for example).
>
> I really find it amusing that most people on this list don't seem to think
> you can have a functioning cluster without Scyld.
Please do not speak for me or make conclusions about what I think.

Before we have another "What is a Beowulf" contest. I suggest all parties
read the definition put forth in the book by Sterling, Becker, Salmon, and
Savarese.

"A Beowulf is a collection of personal computers (PCs) interconnected by
widely available networking technology running any one of several
open-source Unix-like operating systems."

These guys invented the term, wrote the initial papers, the book, and have
provided the definition. Note: I did not say they invented cluster
based computing.

Argument is over.

Doug
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Paralogic, Inc.           |     PEAK     |      Voice:+610.814.2800
130 Webster Street        |   PARALLEL   |        Fax:+610.814.5844
Bethlehem, PA 18015 USA   |  PERFORMANCE |    http://www.plogic.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------